I joined fitday to see if I can get more advice on how to achieve my goals. My first goal, short-term, is to lose 20 pounds before the end of the year (doable...right?) The weight loss plan I'm adhereing to allows for 17 min a day workouts, which is weird. Has anyone had results on less workout and do I have to subscribe to the paid fitday service to ascertain how many calories or how much workout time is required to reach my short and long term goals. If not, where would I find that information...
Thanks and best of luck to you in your weight loss efforts.

20 pounds by January 1 (12 weeks by my calculations) is very doable! That is 1.67 pounds per week. Similar to my post above you would need to maintain a caloric deficit of 830 per day or 5810 per week. I won't do all the math again but you just need to insert your numbers into the formula: BMR + Exercise - Food calories = Calorie deficit

I don't know why a plan would limit workouts to 17 minutes? I have had success doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT, you can google it) work outs that were about 20 minutes in length. I have my doubts about a weight lifting routine, that only allowed 17 minutes, effectiveness. I try to keep my weight lifting to about an hour and limit rest to 60-90 seconds between sets. While exercising too much can be detrimental (over training) unless your current fitness level is so low you cannot walk up a flight of stairs 17 minutes may be too low. Just rember that lower fitness levels and/or higher intensity workouts may require more recovery time.

No, you don't need to subscribe to Fitday (I don't think the additional services will provide exactly what you are looking for, but I am a free user). Your weight loss is influenced by both diet (calories) and exercise. The more you exercise the more calories you can eat and still lose weight. But there is an old adage that says you can't out train a bad diet.